Semiconductor device manufacturing generally involves two phases, the first being the Front-End-of-Line (FEOL) processing in which the digital circuitry (e.g., transistors, etc.) are formed on a semiconductor substrate. The second phase is the Back-End-Of-Line (BEOL) processing, in which the analog components and conductive or metal traces are formed to connect various active semiconductor components together and to corresponding input/output connectors of the device package.
As technology nodes continues to scale down, the density of the digital circuitry continues to increase. However, the rate of increase in the analog circuitry density is generally less than that of the digital circuits. Resistors and capacitors are sometimes formed during BEOL processing for use as frequency filters, etc. Yet, the ability to produce an appropriate number of such analog resistors, capacitors, and inductors in the space available for BEOL processing for the ever-increasing density of digital components in a semiconductor device may be difficult. As such, further advances in BEOL processing may be desirable in some applications.